Highs, Lows and that Perfect Inbetween
by LogicalPie
Summary: Alec Lightwood had type one diabetes. No, not diabeetus. No, not that thing fat people get. Alec has become fairly red up with the world's attitudes to his condition, and is adamant that he's going to save himself the pain of social interaction - Until he meets Magnus Bane, who may or may not manage to change the way he thinks about people. (Malec, for diabetes awareness month!)


**Hey people!  
>So, as many of you may not know, November is diabetes awareness month! As a type one diabetic myself, I had to do something to raise awareness, and since my previous fanfiction (pen and paper, which, by the way I AM going to update soon, I promise) received a lot of followers and positive feedback, so I decided what better way to raise awareness than this?<br>I originally planned to post this on world diabetes day, November fourteenth, so this is late *sigh* but anyway, here it is! :D  
>If anyone has any questions about anything diabetes related that perhaps I haven't explained very well, please feel free to ask in a review, private message, anything! By the way. I totally LOVE reviews... ;)<strong>

**As always the Mortal Instruments series and all it's characters belong to Cassandra Clare.**

"I am not high!" Alec insisted, turning away from his history coursework to glare at his sister.

"Alec, you just drunk two pints of water, and you had another three half an hour ago. You're irritable, sweating like a pig, scoffing all my pudding-"

"Okay, okay! I'll test my blood sugars, Jesus..." Alec yelled with an exasperated sigh. He pulled out his glucose meter and shoved a testing strip into the socket. He then pricked his finger and squeezed out a drop of blood before putting it onto the test strip. Alec was tense as the machine analysed the blood.

Alexander Lightwood had type one diabetes. No, not diabeetus. No, not that thing old or fat people get. His pancreas had stopped producing insulin, a hormone that is essential for life. Insulin takes sugar from the food you eat from your blood stream and into your cells, where it can be used as energy. Without insulin, you die – Your blood sugars would become so high that you'd go into a coma, and, without insulin, you wouldn't wake up. Type one diabetes is a completely genetic condition, not, as popular belief would tell you, a result of being overweight. There is no cure, and diabetics have to live with their diabetes for all of their life. Alec was simply very, very unlucky.

The number 27 flashed across the screen. His normal range was 4-8. His shoulders drooped in disappointment as he slammed the meter irritably down onto the table again.

Alec grumbled something as he took out his insulin pen, pushed a sterile needle onto the top, dialled up a correction dose and pushed the needle into the fat of his stomach.

And Isabelle winced. She mustn't have thought that he'd notice, but he did, he always noticed. She'd always been afraid of needles – that was practically the only fear the woman had – But when Alec had asked her about it when he was first diagnosed with type one diabetes, she claimed to have gotten over it years ago. Alec knew that was a lie.

"Remember to test for ketones. Go to bed soon, okay? School tomorrow."

Alec knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He'd have to battle his blood sugars through the night.

School was indeed tomorrow, and what a pain in the ass it was to be pulled out of his warm bed to go to such a hell.. Alec hated school for the same reason as any other teen hated school, with his own little personal twist. School was a coming together of just about every insensitive, ignorant twat who liked to make fun of his diabetes – Making jokes about his life threatening, chronic condition.

Haha. Hilarious.

So many times he'd been asked how he lost weight (people always presuming he managed to get diabetes purely from being overweight – which wasn't even true for type two diabetics, as there's a genetic element in almost every case), telling him "Whoa, stop! Don't eat that cupcake, you'll die!". Because clearly, diabetic translates into allergic to sugar in the language of ignorance.

Alec was sick of all the jokes – 'Jimmy eats five candy bars, what does he have? Diabetes.' He was so sick of the ignorance, but he'd learned a long time ago to not bother standing up to it, because it simply was futile. He couldn't educate the whole school himself, could he? No, there would always be that group of boys who didn't want to befriend him because they actually thought type one diabetes was contagious no matter how many times he told them it wasn't, always that one group of girls badgering him for weight loss secrets despite the fact he'd told them hundreds of times that he's never been overweight in his life.

And because quite frankly Alec didn't want to deal with idiotic teenagers, he'd become an avid introvert. He sat at the back of the class, trying to make as little eye contact as possible. He avoided having friends, because he knew he had to tell them about his diabetes just in case something happened, but he didn't want to deal with the awkwardness he got when he'd brought it up with friends in the past. Nobody understood, and that was enough reason for Alec to avoid people altogether. He wasn't really complaining, it was nice being alone most of the time. Because of all of this, he wasn't too interested when he heard there was a new boy from Chicago – Until he saw him.

Alec hadn't really been paying attention, so he hadn't seen the man enter, but he could definitely see him now, and he couldn't keep his eyes off him. He was standing confidently at the front of the class, colours streaking his hair – How did they let him into this school, with the strictest dress code ever, with that get up? He was pretty sure that this man was violating every single rule they had, but he also had a strong suspicion that he didn't give two shits.

The colours in his hair made him look exotic along with his caramel skin, and he'd somehow managed to modify his blazer to fit him better and compliment his figure, unlike the baggy thing Alec was wearing. There was glitter in his hair, on his eyes in the form of a green eyeliner that made his green – Yellow? – eyes look like they sparkled. Alec never thought he'd find someone like that as insanely, ludicrously attractive as he did find him.

Alec noticed he was staring about the same time as he noticed that the boy – Magnus Bane, as he'd introduced himself – was staring back at him. Alec quickly let his gaze jump back to the window, trying to act as if he hadn't been staring, and just praying he wasn't blushing.

After half an hour of mind numbing politics, his hands begun to shake. It was slow and gentle as first, then it became more violent, until his hands were involuntarily tapping against his leg under the desk. He checked through the symptoms; Shaking, cold sweats, inability to focus, feeling starving. He was having a hypo, a low blood sugar. He needed sugar. Badly.

He'd been painfully aware of the Bane kid staring at him – Hell, that was probably the reason his sugar levels were dropping at the moment, he had so much adrenaline coursing through him – and he didn't want to test his blood sugars because then he'd see, and after he saw him poking a needle into himself and drawing blood, Alec was fairly certain he wouldn't have a chance with him at all.

'_Not that you had a chance in the first place,_' he reminded himself.

Eventually, the instinct of survival (coupled with the uncontrollable shaking of his hands, cold sweats and the literal feeling that he was going to die if he didn't get some sugar, which he was) took over from the instinct to impress hot guys. Feeling resigned to his lonely fate, he pulled out his glucose meter and tested.

_Buzz._

Head and eyes turned his way, but he kept his gaze trained on the screen of his monitor, currently sporting the word 'analysing'.

_Beep beep._

More eyes on him, the teacher had stopped talking. 2.3 . The teacher looked over at him with concern creasing her forehead and nodded, giving her consent for him to leave. As he walked through the class, he felt stares burning into his skull as his hands shook and his head pounded and he tried to walk in a straight line without bumping into tables. Then, he was out, without any major embarrassment.

He took it easy from there, moving steadily through the hallways to the nearest boys toilets. Technically, he shouldn't move while he was low. He could drop even further and pass out, but the toilets weren't too far away from his class.

He didn't like going to the toilets to treat a high or a low blood sugar – poking a needle into himself in the boys toilets in a high school full of teenagers was possibly the most disgusting and unhygienic thing he could do – but he hated the ignorant questions, the questioning stares as if he were taking illegal drugs from a medical pen even more.

He locked himself inside a cubicle that looked at least a little cleaner than the rest and slid down against the wall. He didn't have to worry about hygiene today, since his blood sugars were low so he didn't need to inject any insulin. No, right now, that would cause his blood sugars to plummet further and kill him.

He fumbled around in his bag, his fingers shaking so much that they weren't much use anymore. Eventually he grabbed hold of a packet of dextrose tablets – solid glucose, solid sugar – and started shoving them into his mouth desperately, trying to raise his blood sugars before he ended up passing out. He hated those tablets, they were far too sweet, and he always found himself cringing as he ate them.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed between then and when his hands stopped shaking, but he broke out of his daze when he heard someone closing the door of the cubicle next to him, and, by the sounds of it, the person started climbing up onto the toilet.

What?

Over the wall of the cubicle popped the head of none other than Magnus Bane.

Before Alec could question what the hell he was doing peering into a cubicle he knew was being used, Magnus dropped a dog tag on a chain down into Alec's cubicle. Alec caught it, then looked up at Magnus, confused.

"Read it." Magnus said simply at Alec's confused look. Alec looked down at the tag.

_Magnus Bane_  
><em>DOB: 2209/1996_  
><em>Type One Diabetes Mellitus<em>  
><em>Insulin Dependant<em>

A medical ID.

Alec looked up at Magnus again, shocked into silence. Magnus was diabetic? Magnus was diabetic.

Magnus grinned a Cheshire grin, "You know, you are the cutest guy in the school, I know already and I haven't even looked at most of our year group. And you know what this means? Now we have to be friends." Magnus winked, and Alec was sure that despite his paleness from his low blood sugar episode, his body had managed to conjure up the best god damn blush it could. His mouth was hanging open, and he looked like an utter lemon. Magnus disappeared, and Alec heard him leave the cubicle.

"Come find me at lunch, okay? I need my horrendously unfashionable ID back, and I have a feeling that if I don't give you a reason to come and talk to me you might not." Magnus said, and Alec heard him leave.

Magnus had been right, he probably would have been too shy to go and talk to him again. So, hell was he grateful for the reason he'd been given to do the exact opposite.

**Hope you learned lots there, and remember, I am a review whore xD**


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